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Budget Battle: 3 Plans on the Table, What Now?

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"The danger here is that everybody will forget about the budget and turn now to immigration and guns, and we leave the budget until the next crisis hits," says Bob Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, which advocates balanced budgets. . . .

That kind of bargaining brinksmanship proved unpopular in the past, though, so Republicans may not want to push it too far in the lead-up to the 2014 elections.

"Boy, that's getting to be a tired old game," says Bixby. "At some point they're going to have to deal with these problems."

Bixby's prediction: some sort of summertime "mini grand-bargain" that avoids a disruptive debt crisis, delivers a limited dose of deficit reduction and requires more work later to take a larger swipe at the budget.